Genesis 3:1-24: The Fall of Man

The following is based on the phonetic writing of the expository teaching tapes of Pastor Jim Mooberry.

This chapter is a “seed plot” for the whole Bible, in fact, everything from Genesis 4 to the end of the Bible makes no sense at all without this chapter. It alone explains the origin of evil and death in the human race. It alone explains this spiritual battle between Satan and mankind and God. It alone explains the present moral and spiritual condition of mankind and it alone explains the need for, and the provision of, the salvation that God provides. It is the record of the fall of man.

It is also an unequivocal refutation of Darwinian evolution. Because that hypothesis says that man began at the bottom of the moral and intellectual ladder and is surely climbing heavenward. The Bible declares that man began at the top and because of sin fell to the bottom. It contradicts evolutionary social philosophers that teach that all of mankind’s social ills are a product of either heredity or environment or both. They are simply denying man’s depravity or original sin. We are told that if only legislators would only make possible a perfect environment then man would be able to realize his ideals and his social ills will disappear. If we could just be genetically reprogrammed and improved upon then all of this evil and all of this pain will just disappear. But man has already been tested under the most favorable conditions and he failed. The problem with man today is not external, it is internal. We don’t need a new environment, we need a new birth and that is what the Scriptures teach us.

Is this even literally historical or is it mythology? Is it simply folklore that was dreamed up to explain the perplexing condition of man and this thing we call death? The authors who write about this view it as literal and historical from his description. The rest of the Bible treats it as literal.

Therefore just as through one man sin entered into the world and death through sin and so death spread to all men because all sin. Romans 5:12

In Matthew 19:4 Jesus refers to a literal Adam and Eve and of the Son of God, the one who is called the Truth refers to them as literal and historical beings than that settles that. In verses 1-5 we see the temptation given to us. Three things about the tempter: he is a serpent or a snake—obviously there is something more involved than just the mere animal here. Revelation 12:9 says “That serpent of old, the devil, Satan.” Now either Satan came in the form of a snake or he came speaking through that animal. The crucial point, right from the beginning, is that temptation from the very first time came in a disguise. Temptation always comes in a disguise. The disguise of sophistication; sin will make you sophisticated. We face that all the time. To be a Christian, to live a separated life, to be holy is viewed by the world as antiquated and naïve. It comes in the disguise of self-fulfillment; sin will enrich your life and make you known more experientially and be fuller. In comes in the disguise of third ultimate virtue; the end justifies the means; it’s okay to tell that lie if it achieves a good end….

Secondly, it says that he was crafty and shrewd. Just as you look at a snake, the thoughts that you get…its an animal that’s sneaky, it lays in wait to strike, wise looking with a piercing gaze… This is a descriptive analogy fitting the picture of the prince of darkness, the devil. He has the appearance of being wise and sleek and yet he is the incarnation of absolute evil. The serpent comes to the woman and he’s very crafty and shrewd. This indicates that already the angelic realm has suffered a fracture that between the creation when God said everything was good and to this point right here, a third of the angels Revelation tells us fell away with Satan in a rebellion against God and they became the demonic hosts.

A snake speaking sounds a little unusual. Wouldn’t Eve suspect something? She is only a few days old as it is only within days of the creation. Adam and Eve are still naive as they are being formed in knowledge as they live on the earth. She is startled but wonders if maybe this animal is supposed to speak. This is where the dialogue begins. There is only three parts to this dialogue and temptation. Two by the serpent and one by Eve, but the serpent opens with a question that is intended to expose a vulnerable area and if he finds it vulnerable then he will set the trap. Notice the three-fold attack. First, he questions the Word of God. In Hebrew the word “indeed” is one of shock. One of almost surprise. So the tone and the intention of the question is raising doubt about the character and the intentions of God. The implication is that there is something that is not right. He is also giving her the suggestion that she can decide whether what God says is reasonable or not. That is the great sin of mankind. When we put our reason above God’s revelation. So he draws Eve into a debate about God’s Word. That’s his favorite tactic—to doubt God’s Word is the essence of sin and to question the reasonableness of what God said is to put our reason on the throne where He belongs.

Notice the effect. Eve begins to waiver in verses 2 and 3, “The woman said to the serpent ‘From the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat, but from the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden God has said you must not eat from it or touch it lest you die.” Eve is already off balance and now she becomes careless with God’s Word. Notice the original command of God in chapter 2:16, 17, “And the Lord God commanded the man, ‘You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die.” Eve, first of all, disparages the privileges of God. Already, the tempter’s suggestion is beginning to work on her. So when she says “From the fruit of the garden we may eat” she left out “any” and “freely.” Satan already knows he’s got her listening. Next, she exaggerates the prohibition of God by saying “or touch it.” Then she lessens the certainty just by a hair of a penalty for disobedience. She says “Lest you die.” He said “You shall surely die.” So she raises the crack at the possibility that there will be no penalty if she disobeys.

In Eve’s defense, she should not have listened to the tempter at all. She should not have questioned God’s Word, but she was young. The Scriptures teach that she was deceived and he deceived her. It is important to handle the Word of God accurately. The simple changing of just a word, or the nuance of a phrase can be an attack on the character of God, can lead to something else then was intended by God and ultimately we disobey and disbelieve the Word of God. In the pulpits across the land—the pastors and teachers need to be very careful to teach the Word of God as it is without adding or subtracting from it.

Satan sees that she is confused and that the opportunity is there. He sets the trigger on the trap first by contradicting the Word of God altogether in verse 4, “You shall surely not die.” That’s a flat lie. Jesus called him a liar and a murderer from the beginning. Then he sets forth a desirable reason to disobey God in verse 5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened and you will be like God knowing good and evil.” This is an attack on God’s character. He doesn’t want you to be like He is….and he declares that disobeying God will actually result in a higher good. He never changes his tactics. He tells Eve she will be like God. That’s the promise of human divinity and that’s continued and he’s used that line through the centuries whether its Hinduism, Baal worship, or Mormonism, or as we see today just spreading like wildfire the New Age Movement. The New Age movement says you are God, God is within you. You need to get in touch with your higher self, your divine self and unleash all of that potential that is resident in you. Men are still following that phantom promise of divinity, they want to be like God.

The temptation of Eve is typical of all temptation that you are subjected to. First of all, we question God’s Word—we put reason over revelation. We would never consider sinning if we would just submit to God’s Word and did not question it. Then we begin to believe that alternative and if God’s Word is truth any other alternative is a lie just by definition no matter how reasonable or good it sounds to you. The world in sinfulness and of rebellion against God just resonates with error. And then we disobey God’s Word.

As human beings, even though we have been forgiven if we have believed in Jesus Christ, we have the spirit of God living within us, we have a new life, yet we still have the flesh resident in us in this life and we do stumble. But we are to never, ever decide that that is okay. We are always to fall on our knees and confess it to God, receive forgiveness and ask Him to help us to move on.

Verse 6 begins the fall into sin. The work of the tempter was finished and now the woman is left with her own reasoning. She’s already on the wrong track and following her impressions rather than God’s instructions and making self-fulfillment instead of God’s glory her goal she sins. She exchanged simple love and obedience for God for love of self and the world. 1 John 2:16 comments on what just happened, “For everything in the world—the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and boasting of what he has and does—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” The lust of the world is not from the Father it is from the cosmos—the world system in rebellion against God.

As we look at Eve—the lust of the flesh; she saw that the tree was good for food—physically gratifying (lust of the eyes); the pride of life; it was desirable to make one wise—the potential for superiority. That is the pattern for all sin ever since. She looked, took, and then ate. The battle is often lost at the first look. That’s why the Scriptures tell us make no provision for sin but we as Christians always want to walk close to the edge by having things around that we know tempt us to sin instead of just getting rid of it.

Adam follows her in verse 6 “….she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” It appears as though Adam may have been standing there watching Eve all along, yet the Scriptures say that Adam was not deceived. He ate in disobedience with his wife. Satan’s promises will never come true as they now instantly learn that wisdom is never obtained by disobeying God’s Word. The consequences followed.

The first consequence was death. Verse 2:17 says you shall surely die—went instantly into affect the moment they bit into that fruit and swallowed it. From that moment they were separated spiritually from God–spiritual death in disobedience and the principle of death in their bodies began to function and they began to die. In the Hebrew it says “dying you shall die.” Their eyes where opened—the flood of insight that they got in that moment and the terror of it. Romans 5:12 says that it is universal—it cam through one man and it spread it says to all men because all sinned. We are children of Adam and because of that we are born sinners. We sin from womb the Scriptures say because we are sinners—the doctrine of original sin.

The second consequence is alienation. They were immediately alienated in their hearts and in their conscience from God. You see the guilt in verse 7 as it says their eyes were opened and they knew they were naked. Their sense of guilt was immediate as they looked at each other and realized that they were naked. It’s not that they didn’t realize it before, but sin now began to bring to them all of the categories of immorality and lust and they felt shame. Then, typical of mankind, they tried to cover their own sin with their own devices and they made coverings, but as we will see it will not suffice with God.

In verses 8-10 fear also entered in “Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden.” Then the Lord God called to the man “Where are you?”–this is a “deep statement.” “He answered, ‘I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.’” Men have been hiding themselves from God since that day. The chilling words followed “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you not to eat from?” Can you sense the terror in that—he knows God knows and so what immediately happens is self-vindication and rationalization and blaming someone else. Immediately, Adam puts two people in the line of accountability between him and God—his wife and God Himself. This is common to humanity. We are always trying to avoid guilt. The woman does the same in verse 14. This is why the self-help movement and psychology is so popular today—it just resonates with our depraved hearts. It is God’s desire that He have fellowship with us but sin has broken that fellowship and now man fears and hates approaching God because he is an alienated being because of his sin. God’s solution is a second Adam—Jesus Christ. God’s desire is that as we are children of Adam in our physical flesh that we will become children of the second Adam Jesus Christ through faith in Him—to be spiritually born again.

Not only death and alienation, but condemnation in verses 14-19. Sin brought death that brings alienation and condemnation and the holiness of God demands punishment now and all three participants in this historic rebellion are sentenced—actually four are sentenced because the serpent is viewed both in his physical animal sentencing and also the one behind it, and that is Satan. “So the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’” Because it yielded to the evil one as a tool, the serpent is going to endure degradation all the days of its life. He is the lowest of stature in literally the beasts of the field. The snake is the only animal with a bony skeleton that goes on its belly. It is the lowest of the beasts of the field and that corresponds to human observation—the snake in God’s providence and in its purpose becomes a perpetual object of loathing and hatred and an example of Satan and the Fall.

Behind the reptile was “the tempter”—the serpent. His punishment is in verse 15 “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” The snake is cursed but Satan is to be crushed. This verse in reality is a great prophecy. It was known by the rabbis for centuries as “the first Gospel.” It is the first announcement from God, right in the midst of His declaration of judgement, that there is one coming—a seed of the woman, a man who would be able to reverse what has happened and destroy the devil. The use of “seed” which is word for human posterity, and personal pronouns tip you off to a wider application. You (Satan), the woman is Eve,….your offspring Satan, the demonic forces are in conflict against her offspring (mankind) but there will be one come her and he (that ultimate One) will crush you. You will bruise Him and He will crush you.

As we look forward to the New Testament and the historical appearance of Jesus Christ and His death, burial, and resurrection we see that Satan bruised Him—not a fatal injury because He came back from the grave, but in fact Jesus has crushed him. His judgement is certain and only awaits the complete progress of human history as God has planned. Satan was victorious over mankind through the woman, yet it is through this woman that his retribution will come.

In verse 16 is the condemnation of the woman “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” Her two-fold curse is suffering and subjection. It is epitomized in the bringing forth of children and the pain involved in that, but it is more than just a physical pain in view here it is in relation to the awful affects of sin and of parenting in a sin-filled world with sin-fallen children. While God’s grace and is sufficient and can redeem us from that, yet the natural order of things is that it is a sinful agony. In Chapter 4:7 we know that she has a desire to dominate her husband, in the account of Cain’s sin God says, “ If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you(The same exact phrase), but you must master it.” God is saying that sin desires to master you—to dominate you, but you must master or dominate it. Eve sought to act independently of Adam, in her sin to take charge and she led him into sin and as a result her penalty will be that she is the one who will be controlled. This is the beginning of the battle of the sexes and the battle for dominance. The horrible abuses of history, and there have been many. God ordained hierarchy of man being the head, but it was ordained without sin. It worked perfectly in love and sin is what has polluted it. Because of sin this curse has come upon that women have been mistreated through the centuries and in Jesus Christ there is a reversal of that. There is still a hierarchy of headship in the church and the family and the marriage relationship, but when done in love in a new person it is not abusive.

For the man in verses 17-19, “To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you(cursed is creation—all of nature is cursed); through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” Nature is cursed because of him. Life becomes hard and becomes a life of hard labor ending in death. The ready-produce of the garden is gone and nature now is not going to cooperate. Look around—this is the world we live in. Prior to the fall there were no extraordinary efforts to combat weeds, insects, the ground, and the weather. God’s punishments are fitting the crime—Adam and Eve sinned by eating, they’ll suffer in order to eat. Eve manipulated her husband, she will be mastered by her husband. The serpent destroyed the human race, One from the human race will destroy him.

The fourth consequence from the fall is expulsion from the garden. Verses 22-24, “And the Lord God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us(reference to the Trinity), knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.’ So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. After He drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.” The real principle of death in the spiritual realm is the beginning of the penalty of death for sin. It would have been possible, if they had eaten from the tree of life, that they “physically” could have lived forever in their depraved and fallen state. It was an act of mercy on the part of God to exclude them from the Garden so that He could redeem them so that they could be born again and live a life with Him through eternity.

Something of the divine provision is seen in verses 20 and 21. First we see Adam’s faith in verse 20 “Adam believed God.” Salvation has always been by grace through faith in what God has revealed to that generation. How do we know that he “believed God?” Look in verse 20, “Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.” He named his wife Eve which means life. He’s not talking about all of the creatures, he’s talking about mankind. He believed God’s promise that through her death and the serpent would be destroyed. Eve was the mother of the seed that was coming. Eve also believed as is evidenced in chapter 4:1 by her attitude toward the birth of one of her children. We see that there was faith and in verse 21 we see the provision God made for man. This is one of the more eloquent object lessons in all of the Bible. Verse 21, “The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.” In order for God to provide animal skins for them that animal had to die. The Scriptures verify that this is the beginning of God teaching man about the sacrificial death that must be made for them for the forgiveness of sins. It’s a beautiful picture of salvation—the death of the animals speak forward to Hebrews 9:22, “In fact, the law requires that nearly everything be cleansed with blood, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” The death of the great seed of the woman Jesus Christ died for us. These animal deaths did not take their sin away, it simply covered it as they believed in the provision that would come later—Jesus Christ took it away. The animal was innocent but died for man who was guilty—there’s the concept of substitution being taught. The Son of Man came to give His life as a ransom for many(Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.”). The coats were to cover the man and woman’s shame speaks of what the Scriptures tell us about the imputed righteousness of Christ. On God’s record book we are born with sin on that record. As we sin in life it continues to build on our account book and that sin we owe God death for. When we believe in Jesus Christ who died in our place then God wipes clean our slate in forgiveness—total forgiveness because He paid for our sin and we accept it. His righteousness and His righteous life is credited to our account—we are actually clothed in His righteousness and that’s the meaning of justification. Even Isaiah, 800 years before Christ, was given a vision by God and he saw the miracle of it. He says in Isaiah 61:10, “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness”—the righteousness of Christ. That’s why we as Christians can declare that we are justified in God’s sight and know we are going to heaven while we are yet sinners because what is on His record book is not our sin anymore, but Christ’s righteousness.

Galatians 3:27, “for all of you who were baptized (the spirit’s baptism into the body of Christ) into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ.”

Romans 3:21-24, “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

The redemption through Jesus Christ is God’s solution—it is His provision for our plight. All of the social and nvironmental engineering is not going to make us good people. What will change us is a new birth in Jesus Christ when we believe in His salvation that He provided for us on the cross.

If there is no literal creation as recorded in Genesis 1 and 2, and there is no historical Adam created in the image of God, no historical fall into sin for which is the explanation for why we are all sinners, and therefore there is no need for a Savior because in reality there are no eternal souls, we cannot have a personal relationship with God because He does not exist, and Jesus Christ was a liar because Jesus referred to a historical Adam and taught that he existed. Christianity is worthless is this book is not true and salvation is empty. There is not a middle ground on the historicity of these events and regarding salvation. If Jesus Christ is our Savior He is our Savior from sin. Where did Adam come from? He was created by God.

Let us be very clear about what God says about our origins and our condition. “God who made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord in heaven and dwelleth not in temples made with hands; Neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us: For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device. Acts 17:24-31

God has appointed the God-man Jesus Christ and He will either be your Savior or your Judge. In the recesses of our hearts we can hear this word. The issue becomes what have you done with Jesus Christ.

Genesis 7:11-24, “In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the flood-gates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights. On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark. They had with them every wild animal according to its kind, all livestock according to their kinds, every creature that moves along the ground according to its kind, and every bird according to its kind, everything with wings. Pairs of all creatures

Romans 12:2, Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—His good, pleasing, and perfect will.

Paul encourages us by the Spirit of God to have our minds renewed—not to be onformed to our present world and as a Christian, as a believer in Jesus Christ, this an age-long life-long battle. We are born in the world. We are of the world until we are born again and so we think like the world until that time and after we become Christians we are encouraged to not think as the world does but to “think after the truth” and to see the world “reality” which is “the truth of God.” We are constantly being challenged to have our minds renewed.

We live in a day which is probably dominated by what is called scientism—we revere, almost worship science. Science is a science in our day without God. Having eliminated God from their thoughts and their minds and their evaluation of the world, we have been given some very strange interpretations of life and reality. A worldview is at stake. Either the world’s worldview or our worldview as Christians through God’s Scripture. Our salvation is at stake as well. Put aside all pre-conceived conceptions about the earth and reality as you see it because some of this may make you uncomfortable because you have been taught over and over that the world is here by chance, that we are here by a process called evolution and when we read what God says in the Scriptures we will have conflict with that. Mankind may strive to explain life in the cosmos by leaving God out, but they cannot erase God’s continuing witness that He is and that He does rule this earth.

Modern science has managed to take this evidence that we see buried in the earth and have taken this sedimentary graveyard and turned it into a fictional account of earth history. What they have told us and what we have been told from our generation from almost birth through schools and all the universities of academia that all of this is and evidence of a slow evolutionary development over billions of years of imaginary earth history. In fact, this strange notion has today become so accepted and taught that you will find it everywhere in our society. But fossils speak of death not development. Their witness is one of extinction not evolution and death speaks of sin and judgment not chance and progress. The evidence is there. Fossils by the billions and some scientists estimate by the trillions. The Bible says it is explained by the great Flood.

The setting is in Genesis chapter six and the corruption of mankind, “Genesis 6:5-7, The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he made man on earth, and His heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, ‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

We observe here the tragic results of the Fall. They are totally depraved. Their bent is always toward sin.

Mark 7:20-23, What comes out of a man is what makes him ‘unclean.’ For from within, out of men’s hearts, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance and folly. All these evils come form inside and make a man ‘unclean.’

No one is more grieved about our sin than God is. God must judge mankind and proposes to do so in verse 7. There is one exception found in that generation—Noah.

Verses 8-10, But Noah found favor (grace) in the eyes of the Lord. Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God. Noah had three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.

Literally, Noah found grace. God singled out this one man and extended grace to him in the midst of an evil generation. Noah was just as sinful as everyone else on the earth except that God in His grace singled him out and brought to him life and declared him to be righteous through faith. This is typical of all salvation. Its God’s unmerited favor—we deserve nothing. In His loving kindness extended grace to Noah.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply